


Talk to Me

by TheNarator



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Betrayal, Fix Fic, Fix-It, Gen, Murder, Recounting Trauma, So many friendships, Trauma, bad memories, damaged people talking about their issues, murder that happened in the past, no shipping just friendships, or mentions of murder anyway, these three need to all be friends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-05
Updated: 2016-04-05
Packaged: 2018-05-31 11:07:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6467809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheNarator/pseuds/TheNarator
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rather than deal with it by herself, Jesse goes to Team Flash with the recording of her father murdering the Turtle. Cisco doesn't think he can properly understand what she's going through, so he calls in the cavalry, aka Thea.</p>
<p>Thea understands a lot more than Cisco anticipated.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Talk to Me

**Author's Note:**

> so this is for anyone who felt that the whole subplot of harry murdering the turtle was poorly handled. i'm a little miffed that straight up murdering a dude qualifies as "morally questionable" as long as the writers are determined to make you a hero no matter how much of an amoral cretin you are, but that's what we have fanfiction for.

Part of the job of a superhero was to answer the call of those in need. Thea knew this, but the thing was that usually people didn’t ask for her help; they wanted the Green Arrow, and she just came as part of the package deal. She wasn’t bitter about this -- Ollie had started this crusade so he got to be the head of it -- but it would have been nice for someone to need Speedy for a change.

The first time someone asked her and only her for help though, it wasn’t Speedy that they needed. It was Thea.

“Cisco?” Thea had asked, surprised to find the movie buff with the long hair calling her at nine in the morning.

“Thea?” he’d replied. “I didn’t wake you did I?”

“No no, I was up,” Thea told him. Even after being cured by the Lotus, nightmares about the Lazarus Pit still kept her awake some nights.

“Good,” Cisco had sounded nervous, a little frantic, and she could hear him moving things around as though he were doing something else even as they spoke.

“I’m sorry to bother you,” he went on, “but I need your help.”

“Did Barry talk to Ollie?” Thea wondered. She hadn’t gotten a call from him-

“No,” Cisco told her, “I meant you specifically. You mentioned that Malcolm Merlyn was your dad, right?”

“Yeah,” said Thea carefully. The last thing she needed was someone asking her to talk to Malcolm. She was trying to cut him out of her life; she wasn’t asking for any more favors.

“So you have experience with the whole Evil Dad Thing,” Cisco concluded.

“Is having an evil dad a Thing now?” Thea asked curiously. “I mean, I know Felicity had the Calculator, but-”

“Felicity’s dad is evil?” Cisco demanded in alarm. “I mean, I know he was a shitty parent, but . . . wait, no, that’s not the point. The point is I have someone here who really needs someone to talk to, and I think out of everyone you’re the person who’s most likely to understand.”

Thea paused, considering. “You really think I could help?” she asked after a few moments of silence.

“I think you can,” Cisco assured her. “If you could just let Barry run you down here-”

“Sure,” Thea told him decisively. “When will he be here?”

“Well he just left,” Cisco informed her, explaining the slight whoosh of wind on his end. “So, he should be there any minute.”

***

Jesse Wells was lying in bed, facing the open window and not moving at all, when Thea entered. Joe, Barry’s adopted father, had provided her with a kitchen chair, which she carried in and placed on the other side of the bed. She didn’t sit down right away though. Instead she watched as Jesse lay on her side, staring out the window and breathing evenly. She wasn’t asleep, Thea knew that much, and she’d wager that she wasn’t the first person whose presence Jesse had ignored today.

“So,” said Thea pointedly, one hand on the back of the chair and the other sliding anxiously into her pocket for lack of anywhere else to go. “Jesse, is it?”

“Yeah,” said the other girl, in a hoarse voice. She sounded like she’d been crying recently.

“I’m Thea,” she replied. “I’m a friend of Barry and Cisco’s. They’re worried about you, you know.”

Jesse said nothing.

“They think that, maybe, it might help to talk about this,” Thea told her gently.

“I don’t think anything can help,” Jesse said, shaking her head slowly, rubbing it against the pillow as she did so.

Thea considered for a moment. “Well,” she tried, “how about if I talk and you listen?”

Jesse shrugged. “Fine, if you want.”

Slowly Thea sat down, trying to come up with the words to begin.

“It’s hard to know where start,” she admitted, “but I guess it started when I thought that my dad and my brother died when our family’s boat sank.”

Jesse didn’t say anything, but her body tensed and she shifted slightly, angling her body a little more towards Thea.

Thea nodded to herself. This was going to work.

“For five years I thought that,” Thea went on. “Then, after all that time, my brother came back. My dad didn’t, though, but I was still so happy that Ollie was alive. Then, I started to realize that he was . . . different. He didn’t trust me anymore. He kept secrets from me, lied to me. Eventually I found out why, but it took more than two years for him to tell me that what he’d been keeping from me was his double life, as the vigilante of Starling City.”

“Wait, Oliver’s the vigilante on this Earth?” Jesse asked, turning just enough to look at Thea.

“Yeah,” Thea nodded. “Pretty wild, huh? Oliver Queen, the hero of Starling City.”

“On my Earth-” Jesse began, then stopped short. She turned away again, as though ashamed of what she’d been about to say.

Thea didn’t have room for that to trouble her; the other Earth was the other Earth, and the hard part of her story was coming up now. She took a deep breath, and forged on.

“He still kept secrets from me though,” she continued, “and those secrets left me vulnerable. A man named Malcolm Merlyn destroyed a large part of our city, and then he came after me.”

“How did the secrets leave you vulnerable?” Jesse wanted to know.

“Because they left me angry,” Thea tried to explain. “I was fed-up and frustrated and so I tried to strike out on my own. That was how Malcolm found me.”

“Did he try to kill you?” Jesse asked tiredly, as though sure she already knew the answer.

“No,” Thea corrected. “He told me that he was my biological father.”

At this, Jesse finally turned around. She sat up in bed, looking at Thea in horror and pity. Thea was used to that look: she’d gotten it from Ollie, and Laurel, and Roy. Seeing it again, after so much time, and from this stranger no less, seemed almost surreal. The shock of her true parentage was so far behind her that it barely seemed to matter anymore, in the face of what had come after.

She took another deep breath. She finally had Jesse’s full attention, and the story wasn’t over.

“He persuaded me to leave the city with him,” she went on. “I knew what he’d done but I was so angry at Ollie that I didn’t care. He told me that he would make me strong. That he’d never lie to me.”

“Did he?” Jesse asked.

“Make me strong?” Thea replied. “Yes. Not lie to me? No. In fact he told more lies that Ollie, and more destructive ones too. He . . .”

She trailed off. This part was hard to recount, even now. She knew she was risking loosing Jesse here, but she had to trust that Cisco was right about this girl.

“He drugged me,” she finished her sentence at last. “He gave me something that made me . . . susceptible to suggestion. And then he took me home and he forced me to kill someone I cared about.”

If Jesse’s look had been horrified before, now she looked absolutely heartbroken. There was still pity there, though, like she knew. She understood. Thea was grateful for that.

“It took me a long time to accept that what he did wasn’t my fault,” Thea told her. “Malcolm might be my father, and . . . honestly he may care about me, in his own sick way. But that doesn’t make him a good person. And it sure as hell doesn’t make him a good father.

“Okay,” said Thea after a deep, shuddering breath. “Your turn.”

Jesse sat up a little straighter, looking down at the bedspread as though trying to gather her thought. Thea was quiet, waiting for her to find the words that she needed. This kind of thing couldn’t be expressed in just any way.

“I found out that my dad did something horrible,” Jesse began softly. “He . . . allowed one of his inventions to poison our city. He hurt people, and he didn’t feel bad about it. I was angry, I confronted him about it, but he blew me off. Then, I got kidnapped.”

Thea considered expressing sympathy here, but she knew it was better not to interrupt.

“He went looking for me,” she went on. “Didn’t stop until he found me. Taking that into consideration I forgave him, and I told myself that he was better than the worst thing he’d ever done. I told myself he’d proved that. Then, just recently, I found out that his-” she smiled bitterly “-grand quest to find me was a lie too.”

Thea frowned. “How was that a lie?” she asked, in genuine confusion.

“He killed someone,” Jesse told her. “In cold blood. And what was more he made a recording, telling me what he’d done. Like it was supposed to make me feel safe, or loved, or whatever.”

Thea tried to imagine that, thinking of how she’d felt when she realized Malcolm was responsible for Sara’s death. It was a little different, she conceded, but there was something similar in it as well.

Jesse shook her head, looking down at her hands. “He didn’t help the Flash, this world’s Flash, because he was trying to be better. He did it because of me, and only because of me.”

She looked up, and Thea nodded her understanding.

“I told Barry right away,” Jesse concluded tiredly. “He locked my dad up as soon as I did. He’s been . . . begging, to talk to me ever since.”

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” Thea assured her. “He’s not your responsibility.”

“He’s my dad though!” Jesse protested miserably.

“And you’re still not responsible for his actions,” Thea argued.

Jesse shook her head. “He did this for me,” she said quietly.

“I know it may feel like this is your fault,” Thea told her, “but I promise you it’s not. What he did to get you back, that’s on him; it has nothing to do with you or who you are.”

Thea leaned forward, reaching out a hand. After a moment, Jesse reached back and took it.

“He’s the one who’s twisted. Not you.”

She squeezed Jesse’s hand, and Jesse squeezed back.

***

“How is she?” Cisco asked the moment Thea appeared on the stairs.

“Getting dressed,” Thea announced proudly. “She’ll be down in a couple minutes. She says she’s starving.”

“I’ll start making pancakes,” Joe replied, getting up from the couch to make a beeline for the kitchen.

“He seems like a good guy,” Thea noted as Joe disappeared.

“Yeah, Joe’s great,” Cisco agreed. “He’s gotta be everyone’s dad.”

“Well Jesse could definitely use someone like that,” Thea said, and Cisco nodded in agreement. Thea went to stand before him, trying to catch his eye as he looked after Joe. “And I don’t think she’s the only one.”

“What?” Cisco blinked, perplexed.

“Barry talks to Ollie,” Thea told him. “Ollie talks to me. I know a little bit about what you’ve been through, with that guy Thawne.”

Cisco looked away. “It’s no big deal,” he said, smiling unconvincingly. “It’s not like with Barry and his mom, or Caitlin and Ronnie, or-”

“Or Jesse?” Thea said pointedly.

This time when Cisco looked away he didn’t start babbling to compensate. He stared at a point to the left of Thea’s shoe, his eyes distant. Thea allowed him his silence. She knew words like these were difficult to come by.

“He wasn’t my dad,” Cisco told her finally.

“Malcolm didn’t raise me,” Thea countered. “Robert Queen did, and I turned my back on him when I called Malcolm my father.”

“That’s not true,” Cisco told her forcefully, shaking his head in denial, but Thea held up a hand.

“My point,” she said, “is that ‘father’ can mean a lot of things. You and Thawne were close, am I right?”

Cisco nodded, not looking at her. “He called me his son,” he confessed.

“Well,” Thea said, “I for one think that qualifies you for the daddy issues drinking club-”

Cisco opened his mouth to protest, but Thea forged on before he could get started.

“-and to talk to Jesse about what happened.” Thea finished firmly.

“It isn’t . . .” Cisco tried, looking lost. “I’m not . . .”

“Not what?” came a voice form the stairs.

Thea and Cisco both turned to see Jesse making her way down. She was in fresh clothes and her hair looked like it had been brushed. Her face was still blotchy and it was still obvious she had been crying, but she looked better than she had before.

Cisco opened and closed his mouth mutely, looking helplessly from Thea to Jesse.

“He’s not going to let you go through this alone,” Thea finished for him, putting a hand on Cisco’s arm.

“Thank you, by the way,” Jesse said as she reached the bottom of the stairs and came to stand with Thea and Cisco. “For calling Thea, I mean.”

“Barry did most of the work,” said Cisco shyly. “I’m just the plan guy.”

“None the less,” said Jesse, reaching out to touch Cisco’s arm gently. “Thank you Cisco.”

Cisco blushed but said nothing else self-deprecating, which Thea decided to count as a win. Eventually Joe called them into the dining room for pancakes and Jesse ate like she hadn’t done so for a day or two, which seemed to cheer up both Joe and Cisco. Thea wondered vaguely how long it had been since Jesse had found the recording.

“How long has her dad been in the pipeline?” Thea asked Cisco in an undertone.

Cisco chewed, then swallowed his mouthful of pancake. “A few days,” he replied. “It’s not like we can arrest him, he’s the doppleganger of a dead guy.”

“And it’s not like we can take him back to my Earth and try him there,” Jesse added. “The portal’s closed. The guy he killed is still alive there. We don’t have a body anymore.”

“It’s a bit of a mess,” Cisco concluded.

“What now then?” Thea wanted to know.

Jesse and Cisco both shrugged. “There’s nothing to do,” Cisco answered her. “For now we leave him in the pipeline until another option presents itself.”

“Which means eventually I’m going to have to talk to him,” said Jesse wearily.

“No,” Cisco said firmly, “not if you don’t want to. No one’s gonna make you.”

“I want to,” Jesse told him. “I think I need to. Not for him; for me.”

Jesse looked at Cisco uncertainly. “Will you be there with me?” she asked. “I know the Turtle was your enemy, and my dad . . . hasn’t been nice, to you.”

Cisco swallowed nervously, then nodded. “S-sure,” he said. “If that’s what you want.”

Jesse gave him a grateful smile, and he shakily returned it. When she removed her hand he looked down at his plate, still smiling a little, then glanced at Thea.

Thea just grinned in satisfaction and went back to her pancakes.

**Author's Note:**

> thea being up at nine in the morning is unusual because she runs a nighclub and thus sleeps in. i might add the scene where jesse confronts her dad in the pipeline at a later time, but for the moment this is just the brot3: speedyquickvibe i've needed ever since thea and cisco started talking about conditioner.


End file.
